[deltaninenine]

The GP didn't talk about a certain nuance and used evidence based medicine to cover all forms of science.

A double blind placebo trial is the gold standard for testing causality. We don't have to go that far. We can use a hybrid of intuition and correlational tests, we can maybe sometimes not always need a placebo. The point is the causal test comes with a lot of technical challenges and we have options for other tests that are less challenging.

There is a spectrum of correctness and rigor for science and we should know when to utilize something extremely rigorous or less rigorous. The barbaric practices you describe only come from an lack of awareness of what statistical rigor and science is.